Tag Archives: PPM’s

Anyone who has read my previous blog articles will know that I spend quite a bit of my time in FM trying to perfect the tactics. Tactics, the system, the philosophy, the approach… whatever you want to call it, it’s vital for success in Football Manager.

But tactics are only half the battle. At the end of the day, it’s the players that will dictate whether your tactics are successful. You can have the most revolutionary, awe-inspiring and unrivalled genius of a tactic but if you try to use Adel Taarabt as your midfield enforcer then you’re going to struggle.

So what I aim to do with this article is run through my approach to identifying the right player for the right role – which attributes are important, what PPM’s does a player need, would they benefit from any personal instructions?

And to do so, we’ll use the 4-1-4-1 I’ve been developing with Rapid Wien and Austria as a case study.

The least that anyone can expect and the absolute minimum aim for any Football Manager is to make progress year-on-year. Progress can take many forms – a higher league position, a minor trophy for a small club or even simply strengthening the squad on a budget whilst maintaining the status quo during a transition year.

For Den Haag, last season was the first of those and I’m hoping this season will be one of the latter two options.

After the forced sales of two big stars at the start of last year, the aim is to keep this developing squad together and build on what has certainly been a positive, if ultimately frustrating, campaign.

Incidentally, there was no new sponsorship deal announced – hence why I’ve stuck with the same kits as last year.

Read on for more details of how we fared last year, some important transfer news and a fair bit of detail on the developing Germanic Total Voetbal tactic…

So I’ve been requested to write a bit on my approach to scouting. As I don’t feel that scouting itself is terribly exciting, I’ve morphed this request a little into covering more on the process of the entire transfer.

I guess that there’s an opinion amongst some of my readers that I am more thorough than some FM-ers in my transfer policy. I say “thorough” but that’s really a polite way of saying it. Pernickity, overly analytical, obsessive or borderline anal might be more accurate descriptions of my transfer policy.

I really enjoy the transfer dealings within FM and I tend to spend an awful lot of time considering my moves, at least whilst I’m managing small clubs (which is 99% of the time).

For me then, there’s a very logical process which culminates in a player signing on the dotted line…

I watch every minute of every Austrian Bundesliga game. This blog contains posts from the top players of the week, to top youngsters to watch. Follow me on twitter for more: @FRfussballtim. For all enquiries email: tim.jones@footballradar.com. All views expressed on this blog are my own.